AUGUST

octopus growing, ever growing, pushing out a
tentacle here and another there.

Down below the tiny people swarm, the tiny
omnibuses, small enough to pass through a needle's
eye, thread the narrow ways, and there is just the
faintest feeling of life, of the power of those thousand
wheels, in the iron balustrading.

I climb up higher still towards the cross of St.
Paul's.

Now the staircases become openwork and difficult.
There are three, the last one ending in a narrow
place just big enough to take the body. There is a
little window covered by wire-netting. I cling to the
staircase and look out—a perfectly terrifying view of
London, as if one were looking out of a stationary
airship. When I look up it seems that the great
cross of Paul's is leaning against the sky.

Then I remember the strange story, quoted by
Thornbury from The Cyclopaedia of Medicine, of
the man who met a wizard in this very spot.
This young man, who obviously went mad, said
that he was taken up into the ball of St. PauPs by
a stranger whom he had met in the churchyard.
When they were there a strange fear and trembling
assailed him as his friend took out a queer instru-
ment like a compass with a mirror in the centre,
which he addressed in a strange language. He then
asked the young man if there was any one in London
whom he would like to see. He asked to see his
father. Immediately a picture of his father appeared
in the mirror. The young man was so frightened
that he said he must descend. At the door of St.
Paul's the mysterious stranger whispered in his ear,
* Don't forget that you are the Slave of the Man with
the Mirror ! *